


two wild animals half a league from the sea

by woodlands



Category: Black Sails
Genre: First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Season/Series 04, another day another mention of silver’s Paranormal Flint paranoia, very brief allusions to unnamed trauma in silver’s past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodlands/pseuds/woodlands
Summary: Perhaps in time Flint will teach Silver enough of the blade that men will fear him as a god, too.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	two wild animals half a league from the sea

_I can’t talk about it_ , he thinks about saying, _Please, don’t make me speak any of it out loud_. His peg treads heavy through the dirt and his breath is labored. In his head the words are stilted and mucky, as if hissed through a reed still wet from the water. _Don’t ask me again. Please._

The door to the cabin Flint is staying in doesn’t have a lock, which is good, because Silver still hasn’t figured out how to pick one. It’s dim inside, warmly hazy with the last of the evening sunlight just barely filtering in.

Flint takes one look at him from the table he’s been using as a desk and sighs. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit.” He leans against the doorframe to take some pressure off his leg, knowing Flint will notice but hoping he won’t say anything about it. “A merciful man would skip training for a day, maybe two. Every muscle in my body is complaining.”

A snort from Flint. “Even the muscles that control your mouth, it would seem.”

From another man that might have been flirtatious. He squints down at Flint, who has gone back to whatever he’s working on, hands tracing along the map spread out in front of him, eyes flickering over the inked lines of land and shoal and tide. 

Months ago he was sure, in some small part of himself, that Flint was a god of the sea and the sky, that he could will the weather, could pull gold out of the sand and into the ocean, could make men kill themselves with only a word. Now he is beginning to understand that it is not the supernatural that gives Flint its willing hand, but experience and the work of opening a map or a book or the mouth of someone who is willing to talk. 

Perhaps in time Flint will teach Silver enough of the blade that men will fear him as a god, too. 

“If you asked me again I would tell you,” he says, suddenly, surprising himself, panic rising within him with every word, unable to stop, “Don’t, don't ask me again—but I would.” He swallows. “I would. If you asked.”

“I won’t,” Flint says, sure and immediate. His hands still on the table, body open and calm, as if he is attempting to placate a wild animal. Silver feels wild. He feels carnivorous. 

When Flint stands he does it slowly, carefully. His white shirt, recently cleaned, glows in the low light. Silver has a moment’s frantic thought about the moon and the tides before he is stepping closer to Flint, needing to be in his space, wanting hands on his body that don’t burn on contact.

“Ask me again,” he says, and Flint closes his eyes. 

The candle sputtering on the table isn’t enough to get a read on Flint’s expression when he opens his eyes again. “No,” he says. This time, he sounds angry. 

Two wild animals, then, in a small wooden hut half a league inland from the sea. They can’t get any closer without touching and that thought is both repulsive and compulsive in Silver and it makes him want to weep. 

“Please,” he thinks, and only discovers he’s said it aloud when Flint flinches and takes a half step backward. It’s as much an admission as it is a defensive move, and an opening for Silver, who is starting to suspect he’s learning something up there on those cliffs after all. 

He steps forward and places his boot very carefully between the toes of Flint’s own. He fits one hand to Flint’s waist just to feel the fibers of the white shirt under his palm. “Coward,” he says, even though it’s a lie, pushes the word into the skin at Flint’s temple. Presses his lips against him for a lingering moment and then steps back. 

And back again, towards the door.

“Bright and early,” he says, eyes on the candle, the map, the books spread out on the table—anything but Flint, who isn’t the coward here.

He makes it to the door before there’s movement behind him, three quick steps and Flint’s hand coming into view to push the door closed. “Tell me,” he says, and his teeth are bared when Silver turns to him, like a threat or like he is in pain, and either way Silver never wants to see that look directed his way again. 

“Tell me—“ 

Kissing Flint on the mouth is less about lips or tongues or teeth and more about crawling inside a cave and making a home there, finding shelter in the dark and damp. He searches blindly for something to hold on to and finds it in the sturdy sweep of Flint’s shoulder. It feels miraculous when the hand that comes up to touch his neck does not hold a knife. 

He lets Flint push him down onto the cot and then he flips them, bearing down on him with all his weight, careful to rest his bad leg, hating the ease with which Flint adjusts to make room for it. He whispers, “Are you—“, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking but Flint must, because he says “yeah” and pulls him down to bite into his mouth again.

They don’t fuck. It feels too good the way it is, like this, to slide against one another and run fingers over skin and suck kisses into throats and then, after some frantic time, to cool again, to settle against one another. To listen to the ocean of one another’s heartbeats and dig fingernails into palms.

“I don't need to know your history,” Flint says in the dark, curling his fingers around Silver’s wrist, his voice soft and sure. “I trust you. I don't need insurance from you to protect our friendship or our partnership.”

“You have it,” Silver interrupts, pulling out of Flint’s grasp so he can roll over and speak the next words into the damp crook of his neck, wishing he had gotten Flint’s shirt off and equally grateful he hadn’t, “If you were looking for something ruinous, something you could use as a counterweight to the truth of your own past—you have it. This is—“

“Okay,” Flint sighs and puts an arm around Silver’s shoulders in order to pull him closer. 

“I mean—“

“John.” And that’s too much. It rattles around inside him, another gift, something again to tip the scales. “Shut up. Go to sleep. We have training in the morning.”

He waits a beat, then lets out a long, pained groan. It earns him a chuckle and a resettling of limbs. He closes his eyes. “I hate you.”

“Yeah,” Flint says.


End file.
